There's a lot of interest in voting technology for the expected record numbers of voters in the US presidential election, and voting widgets have become an expected accessory in social Web sites. But the simplest voting technology is no explicit technology. Is there a place for that in virtual worlds? [Read More!]

There's a lot of work being done on so-called 3D desktops. I think it's worth getting some finer-grained terminology. There's 1-, 2-, and 3-D, and the fractional 2.25-D and 2.5-D. And there's the non-spatial dimensions T-D, G-D, A-D, C-D and O-D. [Read More!]

(Sorry, Willie Dixon.)

I haven't been working on our Brie user-interface framework for a while now. We took it to a certain early level in Jasmine Croquet, in which we pretty solidly worked out user interface conventions, internal infrastructure, and the basic direct-manipulation philosophy.

Although not terribly novel (we stole liberally from David Smith, David Unger/Randall Smith, David Place/Pat O'Keefe, and, running out of Davids, Stallman/Sussman), Brie was still fairly advanced and abstract research, and we had more immediate work to do: Dormouse and the Croquet SDK release, and several projects using them. Brie had been sustained with financial support from NICT which has come to a pause. A great friend and entire world's best salesman and demo-jock for Croquet went to Duke. So nothing got done on Brie following C5 '06.

Brie has not yet been integrated with the current Croquet SDK. It still needs a lot of work in both the graphics and the API between private and replicated Croquet. It might be most efficient to let some dust settle here: Josh is working on new Croquet graphics, Andreas is working on 2D interfaces, and David Smith is working on the task/interactor model.

But the main thing is that I'm starting another project that I'm very excited about (more about this later), so I know that I won't have time to work on Brie for a while. Fortunately, I do think that, say, phase III or so of the new project will be a driver for pulling Brie out of the closet again.

There's a nice video of Sims creator Will Wright explaining the new game he's developing, called Spore. (An edited-down version of the video, concentrating on the game play, is here. (Thanks for the lead, John!)

Very cool stuff, and I think a nice addition to the set of collateral material that gets at some of the aspects of either Croquet or Brie. A very nicely done thing to compare against
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I gave a demo of Brie at the OOPSLA Croquet workshop in October, and Julian gave one a couple weeks ago at C5. Alas, no video, but the Brie papers are here and here.

This terrific video of the Alternate Reality Kit was made at Xerox PARC in 1987. So, of course, it's not actually Brie, but it does give a lot of the feel of what we're going for. There are a few UI differences and the ARK is only 2D, but the main thing is that Brie is synchronously collaborative, and therefore eminently shareable.

Another related thing (without a cool video) was PARC's Thing Lab.
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Last week I was asked about information management in Croquet. Editing and editorial are tough problems in any global information system. I don't have a magic bullet, but I do think we have two general approaches. [Read More!]

I've been trying to capture “what it is” about software that has a sense of fun, is toylike, and which allows users to feel they are directly manipulating “real” objects that they more-or-less understand. I want to shorten the link with pen pointers instead of mice. That's a lot of words. There's something more basic.

Touchability. I think human beings are uniquely wired to fondle stuff, and to want to do so. My dog sniffs and tastes. Ants use their antennae. We comprehend and alter the world with our hands. I play with my so-touchable wine glass, but not with the utilitarian water glass next to it. No child can resist touching a musical instrument left out, particularly strings and pianos because they don't need lips. I always reach for my leather coat before my ski jacket. Bad Flash sites are visually stimulating, but good ones make me want to touch it all over to be rewarded with workings and sounds.

I sometimes get asked about Croquet for computing devices with lower graphics capability, such as today's phone/PDA/iPods. I think the train of thought is that there's so much in Croquet that could be valuable independently of the immersive 3D environment, so shouldn't that part be available on lesser machines?

I feel it is only worthwhile to initially build Croquet – all of Croquet and only one Croquet – on machines with the best commonly available graphics capability and also on those with no visual capability whatsoever!
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In working on Brie, I had been vaguely aware that the 'Self' language was similarly based on copying prototypes rather than instantiating classes. So I kind of went 'yeah, whatever' when Rick McGeer and others told me to check up on this '80's Xerox PARC project.

Wow. I hadn't realized that Self was so close in both the domain and the solution spaces. If there's interest I'll try to produce a comparison later, but for now, check out the Self site and, in particular, this paper.

In What Is It About Immersive 3D?, I claim that being immersed in among the application components allows and encourages us to mix and match among bits and pieces of different applications. That is, we're getting rid of the idea of having separate “applications” on a computer.

I forgot to mention the other aspect of immersive 3d: that we want to get rid of the computer. Well, actually, that we want to make using each application object feel like a real world object, not a computer thingie. The direct manipulation feel makes it easier to work with stuff, and the lack of indirect abstractions and symbols makes it easier to understand.

A few examples below the fold.
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